NASA just awarded six private companies a total of $44 million.
The agency’s “Tipping Point” program is intended to help the commercial space industry push next-generation technologies over the finish line.
The projects awarded funding include new moon-landing systems and a method to recover expensive rocket engines.

NASA is doling out a total of $44 million in awards among six private companies, including Jeff Bezos’ secretive rocket company, Blue Origin.

The new contracts are part of the agency’s third “Tipping Point” competition and an ongoing push to commercialize space. The goal of the awards is to help companies take what NASA sees as exciting, almost-ready-to-debut devices and “tip” them over the finish line into commercial markets.

The money covers 10 distinct projects, including ways for robots to land on and explore the moon, a next-generation fuel cell to power deep-space missions, a deep-space propulsion system, and an inflatable shell that may one day help land people on Mars.

“These key technologies will support NASA’s science and human exploration missions in the future,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a press release.

The biggest winner of the competition was United Launch Alliance, formed by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The aerospace company (which is about to launch NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to “touch” the sun) scooped up $13.9 million. Blue Origin, meanwhile, walked away with $13 million in contracts.

Here’s a quick look at the projects NASA picked:

The companies that won NASA ‘Tipping Point’ awards and how much

Astrobotic Technology, Inc.

Project: “Stand-Alone Sensor for High Precision Planetary Landing” ($10 million)What it is: A “low-cost, reliable, high-performance, stand-alone” system to help Astrobotic, a former team in the Google Lunar X Prize competition (which ended without a winner), continue its work to land a commercial lunar spacecraft on the moon …read more

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